Got Mashed Potatoes

"Well, we're a little busy, now, Angie. And the gutters aren't really a priority," Jess says.

"Oh, I know that you're busy, and that I ask a lot, and you're always busy. But I really think it needs to be done."

"You mean the gutters clogged by your trees?" I butt in.

Angie nods. I nod. Jessica gulps.

"Will cleaned them out last fall, so we'll keep an eye on it, have a good da-"

"After I asked you last year, I haven't noticed much of a change."

"It's just that you always ask, Angie," I say.

"Will!" Jess whisper-shrieks.

"What?"

"You always have something for us to do."

"Will!"

"Will, you and I talk! I talk to you about other things. It's just that I don't get much back from you guys."

"Well, you only get back what you give, Angie. You know that?"

"Will! Let's go in! We're going in!" Jess says, pulling on my arm.

"I! We talk! I! This is really not how I wanted it to be with us," she says, utterly offended, stalking back to the safety of her yard.

"William! We are going inside now!"

There was this woman who came to my wedding reception (the ceremony was private and in the Bahamas). And near the end of the night, when I was pretty drunk and happy, just as excited as I hoped for, she comes up to me -- she's about to leave, see -- and she doesn't say congratulations or any of that jazz. She just says, "Well, you're really old now. You're not 19 anymore."

To which I thought, "Huh?" She might as well have come up to me and said, "Hey, I use gas in my car." At the time I hadn't been 19 for six years. It was as if she had planned exactly what she was going to say (and between you and I, web log audience, I think it's pretty clear her opinion on my marriage was not one of joyous approval), as if she was really trying to upset me.

But I don't understand this business of people getting upset about getting old. There's nothing like getting true enjoyment from walking downstairs to pick up the newspaper in the morning. Or that feeling of relief once the house is clean.

When I was 19 I puked out of a state-owned van. One cannot go through life like that for more than a few years. Well, I suppose one could, but then I would have to have a real high tolerance for personal shame and embarrassment.

So you can imagine my response to this less-than-thrilled attendee: "Well, yeah. That would be true. I am not 19. Thank you for coming. Drive safely."

Her face looked like that of a little kid who just discovered that those people on her favorite show -- they were just actors; their house was just a half-built set that tourist buses pass every day in California. It was that disappointing to her.

What could I say? Yeah. I'm old. But how old could I really get? I mean, physically, I'll just keep going, sure. But if I'm 80 and I'm still saving one of each colored M&M to eat last, for no better reason than I just have to have them all lined up, and somewhere in my head I've convinced myself that each has its own specific taste -- then how old could I really ever be?

Dear Spin Magazine,

I only bought you because the Mothers Against Drunken Driving were selling you, and I couldn't think of a good reason to hang up the phone.

So then you came.

And every time you came, I was slightly surprised to see you. "Oh, yes, I subscribe to Spin Magazine," I reminded myself. "How exciting, now that I can read up on all the latest music news."

I would take you inside, then, and open you up. First there were the thick pages of glossy advertisements of well-dressed, young people -- the sort of people you often poked fun of in your articles. Then there was the table of contents. Then I would try to locate an article, but you never seemed to put page numbers on all the pages, did you?

This was not the first instance in which I noticed you didn't seem to care much about your actual written product. I noticed you began including all sorts of pictures of yourselves -- yes you, the editor and writers -- in pictures with the artists you covered. The unmistakable filth of distaste began to grow as I turned the pages.

Another example of your shoddy work was your reviews section. Each month I would look forward to this section, to read up on all the interesting new music available. But you spent each review summarizing all the other work the artist had done before the particular album being reviewed. Then you inserted some of your smart-alecky comments that struck me as an in-joke with your copy editor, and that was all.

This was not the first time I noticed you trying to be smart, hip or funny. It seems every article in you holds some ulterior motive, that being to convince readers how much you know about someone or something, and how wittily you can put that person or thing down. For example, in the four years you've been dropping on my doorstep there has not been one picture caption in any issue that has not had some "sassy", smart-ass tone to it.

So I slowly began to realize that you were not for me. At first, it was because of "emo". Yes, "emo", that dreaded "sub-genre" of rock music that you could never seem to shut up about. Every damn issue you had to mention "emo", as if that was the only style of rock that meant anything. Would it have killed you, in the four years I bought you, to have included an article on Neil Young?

But, Spin, it wasn't just your constant mentioning of "emo" that lead me believe we must part. No. I think the last straw was your cover article on the ten-year anniversary of grunge music. Or was it the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death? I don't know. But that's the rub, isn't it? Your insistence on Cobain's godhood is what's wrong with music today -- yet you claim to be an outsider of the music press!

Ten years pass and he's still glorified for killing himself. Do you know where Kurt Cobain and/or Nirvana would be right now if he hadn't killed himself? Best case scenario is that they'd be where Pearl Jam is: a successful, but much lower profile band. He'd still be celebrated for writing the song that killed hair metal, but wouldn't that song have been written by someone else? More directly: Wasn't it just a matter of time before some band drew people away from crappy music? But Kurt died, and you glorified him. You glorified him, even though a band like Pearl Jam still exists. They didn't give up. They went on to write album after album of good music. They're easily more talented. But who makes your cover?

Ah, yes. So we've come to the topic of covers. In your quest to become the most popular indie music mag, you've decided to plaster the ugliest, most vile bands on your cover, as if to say to readers, "Look who we've got the balls to put on the cover." Listen. I can shave my dog and glue tinsel to him; that still won't impress the neighbors. I can tell you what your covers do. They tell readers: "We're desperate."

Finally, there was the phone call. You hired some sweaty in New Jersey to call me and ask me why I wasn't renewing my subscription. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving must have called you and told you. Don't worry -- I didn't hop to Rolling Stone. The Mothers didn't have Poetry or Track and Field News, so I didn't support them. I think the Mothers are winning the war as it is. But you were notified, so you called me. And when that Jersey trash bitch picked an argument with me over what my current address was, I drew my line in the sand right then and there, and I threw all of my copies of you to the other side.

So, that's all, Spin. It's been something. Frustrating, really. I'll miss your arrival on my doorstep. I'll miss that feeling that, "Oh, there's something new to read." But I won't miss the disappointment that came with every issue -- every single one -- that feeling, turning to the last page, that there was a lot of fluff there, wasn't there? That sense that I just read a whole lot of nothing that wasn't interesting that I won't remember. That I won't miss.

Smell ya later, Spin. Smell ya later, forever!

Sincerely,

The CD pick of the week: Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey"

The DVD pick of the week: Dawn of the Dead

...to lead a reportedly intelligent man of the people to speak these two statements -- within just an hour of each other:

"I'll crap on your head!"

"I have no animosity toward anyone here, sir."

The one thing I can't understand about this town is how if you come across any barber -- any one -- there's another one within two blocks.

So I'm driving by this house, with the wind tearing up my car, right up to its windshield, right up its gullet, so that when I stick my head out the window my lips blow out in a parachute, and this house has all these columns supporting a porch with a grill and a table with a pot on it, holding a stick straight up in the air, like it could test for wind, and just then this guy standing on the porch turns and looks at me, holding out his arms in a bear hug, as if to grab me, the car, the wind, and even that idiotic little stick, and says, shrieking, "Huh?!" And I stick my head out that window, as if I did this every day from the tops of buildings, saying to him, "It's all right, they ain't gonna fall down!"

I think the most uncomfortable music videos to watch are the ones in which the lead singer plays one of the video's characters and he or she sings, looking straight at the camera. Sometimes they'll alternate between singing to one of the other characters, but at some point they always turn back to the camera, to us, to drive it home. The accompanying fist-pump shows us how much they really believe in their own song.

And the whole time the other characters are acting like this is normal, that camera's not there, he's not posing for anyone else.

"It's the van out there."
"OK."

"Less air?"
"I'm fine."
"Keeps goin' from hot to cold . . . don't know what to do about the air."
"Yeah, it's been hard choosing clothes lately."
"Heh."

"So are we picking you up too?"
"Yeah. It's summer driving season, so I thought I'd get everything taken care of at once."
"Knock her all out in one trip, huh?"
"Yeah. I've got a bunch of weddings and bachelor parties to go to, so before I drive across the state, I thought I'd have it checked out."
"Well, you're young. Everyone's gettin' married at your age."
"They sure are."

"So we take the Oklahoma exit?"
"Yeah."
"That's a nice neighborhood."
"Yeah. Pretty strange, though. We were woken up twice last night by gunshots."
"Over there?"
"Yeah, eight or nine shots. At first I thought it was a car backfiring, but they kept shooting. Then it happened again. Cops were driving up and down. They walked through everybody's yard."
"Ever find out what happened?"
"Nope."
"That's how it always is."

"You don't work?"
"I work second shift."
"Where at?"
"M*******e."
"Oh, yeah? My daughter works there. Writes programs. Or something. Do you write programs?"
"I sure do not."
"I used to have a store over on 34th. But when I retired, none of my kids wanted to take it over, so I guess that's that."
"Yeah."
"It's for the best, though. They have all these tech jobs. All my kids are programmers. They never hurt for work."
"No, I bet they don't."
"And it's good experience. Better'n a convenience store on 34th anyway. My wife's uncle used to work there, but he's dead now. Oh, God, I'm getting old."
"Yeah, we are."

"So what's a good saw to use to cut open a gutter?" I asked the Ace Hardware guy, who then looked at me as if to say, "You call yourself a man?"

"A hacksaw. Aisle six."

So I went home and cut open the gutter. Jessica and I have an old house, and the gutters lead (against current code) straight into the sewer. After standing next to the gutter, hearing the terrified scuffing and struggling of some small animal inside, we agreed: we have to get it out; it could clog the sewer.

Which was bullshit, of course. We just didn't want to admit we felt bad for the bird. There were varying opinions on the subject, though:

Jessica's mother: "It's dead. It's in the sewer now. It made it through. Or if it's not, just let it die. But that's me!
The tenant: "What a stupid bird."
The Ace guy: "Oh, it'll fly out. How high is the gutter? Thirty feet? Oh, it'll fly out."

So with half the gutter cut open, I got worried that the bird was sitting on top of the hacksaw. So we pushed the gutter in, gaining a new respect for whoever installed our gutters, until it squeezed out, covered in blood, and Jess caught it in a sheet to take to the humane society.

Every time someone at my job gets upset about the job, I just tell them to look out the front door.

We're on the third floor in our building. There is a regular elevator, a service elevator, and a stairway leading to the front door. I take the stairs. Every day I walk up the two flights and open the door to the hallway in which everyone scans his or her ID card to enter the doors. But before I can get to the door, I have to walk to the left, up this wheelchair ramp. It's a long ramp, but it only takes me about four or five inches up in height. There could easily be a single stair, but I suppose the company didn't want to get sued for not having wheelchair access.

Wheelchair access to a stairway.

It's a good job. And I do prioritize it, because I like to pay the mortgage on time, and I like to eat. You just can't get too upset about a place that can't afford mouse pads, but puts a wheelchair ramp at the head of a stairway.

I've made it through a couple new books of poetry recently. Well, they're new to me. Robert Bly has been a writer I've been meaning to get to for a long time, now, mainly because he's a Midwestern poet, living in Minnesota, and he was a good friend to James Wright. I just finished Bly's "Meditations on the Insatiable Soul", a book of poems published in 1994, well after Bly's reputation was established in the publishing community.

Like much of what I've been reading lately, it's hit and miss. Strangely enough, this book started out poorly. For example. And before I start, I think I can confidently state that poems like the one of which I'm about to write may be what bother a lot of people about modern poetry. The first poem in a book, as I've been told, is important. It sets the tone and pace the writer wants to emote. It is strong work. The book may contain some throw-aways -- some poems the publisher wasn't crazy about, but allowed in as filler or curiosity. But the first poem -- this is the attention-getter.

"Men and Women", the first poem in "Meditations" begins with

Horses go on eating the Apostle Island ferns,
Also sheep and goats; also the big-nostriled moose
Who knocks down the common bushes
In his longing for earthly pleasure.
The moose's great cock floats in the lily pads.
That image calms us. His nose calms us.

It's a poem entitled "Men and Women", so the reader expects something about differences, exaggerations, contrasts. And in the third part of the poem, Bly does this, posing men against women, detailing a very absolute difference. But for this first stanza, reading about the calming abilities of a moose's great cock does nothing for me. Rather: it strikes me as extremely reaching, meaning, he's reaching for a reaction. I know he's trying to do something with image. I know poetry is all about imagery. But when it gets to the point of ridiculous, it's going to turn readers off. This is something I can imagine being parodied on late night television. This, the first poem in the very celebrated Robert Bly's book of poems.

But it gets better. In a suite of poems on his father's death, Bly writes:

His long hands,
Large, veined,
Capable, can still
Retain hold of what
He wanted. But
Is that what he
Desired? Some
Powerful engine
Of desire goes on
Turning inside his body.
He never phrased
What he desired,
And I am
His son.

Bly's a master of enjambment, leading the eye to the next line. His capitalization of the first letter in each line goes against popular trend, but it emphasizes the value of each line over the whole composition. Therefore a line like "He never phrased" can still mean "He never phrased / What he desired" but it can also mean, simply, "He never phrased" -- he never wrote. Combine that with the ending of the poem, and the fact that Bly is known as a writer and the poem takes on a near-perfect level of irresolution and uncertainty that seems to be the aim of any non-prose composition.

So we bought a new computer last week. We're in the store, browsing with our printout of what we want when the guy approaches us. "That's our best computer," the thirty-something guy with the greased hair and slight paunch says to us before my wife -- who knows when she's not satisfied -- answers him.

"Oh, yeah? What makes it your best?"

"It's awesome."

I don't even need to look at Jessica. I know what she's going to say before she speaks. I see her looking at this guy, who only looks at the display monitor. He doesn't look at us.

"And what makes it 'awesome'?"

"It's just sweet."

"And what makes it 'sweet'?"

Now he pauses and looks at us. He starts to think.

"Uh . . . awesome graphics . . . great sound system . . . this is a subwoofer that--"

At this point I have to cut in. Any time I hear the word "subwoofer" I know I want nothing to do with what is being discussed. I've known people who own and operate subwoofers. They're good people. They are. But they are interested in the fine details. The difference in sound quality of a tape compared to a cd is shocking to them. Surround sound is a priority for them. Fine. For them.

"Let's see the next model down."

After Jess and I decide the next model had everything we needed, she asks about the printer.

"Oh, it's an awesome printer that comes with this."

"Can we see it?"

We walk around the aisle, and see this "awesome" printer. The salesman, who *says* he's not on commission, holds up a copy of some picture of a flower. "See that detail? That's awesome. The quality."

"But that sheet was sitting on that computer," Jessica says, pointing to the printer across the aisle.

"Yeah, this would print out about the same on yours."

When we discuss finances, he says, "You ought to apply for the Best Buy card. That way you can pay in monthly installments with no payments due for a year."

"But we'll have to pay for it sometime," Jess reasons.

"I guess," the salesman says. "I always offer it because you can use your money in other ways then. You can buy other things. I signed up for it, but I got turned down. I had a car repossessed."

"Well, that happens, huh?" I say.

He walks away, now, going to get the large cart that will hold our new purchase. Turning around, with a big smile, as if he's really happy for us, he says, "You're getting an awesome computer!"